Thursday, May 28, 2015

Are some states, at least, starting to do what the federal government ought to be doing? That's an
interesting question raised by a recent AP story on states preventing
cities from enacting certain new regulations, such as banning plastic
grocery bags:

The Missouri bill goes beyond plastic
bags. It also would also prohibit local governments from requiring
businesses to provide employees paid sick leave, vacation or health,
disability and retirement benefits. And it would block cities and
counties from adopting their own "living wage"
requirements. [link added]

If, as I do, you favor government properly
limited to the protection of individual rights, this might sound somewhat
encouraging -- until you place it in the context of the totality of
the article, or merely read the next paragraph:

States
have pre-empted some local policies for decades. A movement to
restrict local gun ordinances began in 1971, for example, and has been
enacted as law in 45 states, according to the National Rifle
Association. State lawmakers in Oklahoma and Michigan this year are
pushing similar measures for knives.

This reminds me of an
account I cannot find the source of, I think by Ayn Rand, regarding a fruitless
debate she had with someone regarding nationalization. Rand used one
industry (steel?) as an example, and found herself apparently winning
a mind with the points she made -- only to realize that she had gotten
nowhere at the end: The other person merely replied something like,
"Yeah, but what about coal?" So much for him realizing that nationalization of industry, period, is immoral and impractical.

Rather than seeing the
beginnings of a movement to stop government from interfering with
contracts between consenting adults, we are just seeing another tactic
of pressure
group warfare becoming more widely deployed. Businessmen, acting
only in the range-of-the-moment to protect some particular concern,
are failing to see the value of being left alone generally. Worse, their tactic further entrenches the precedent of the government dictating every minor
detail in our lives. In the process, some businessmen might win the battle of the bags
(or the benefits, or the wages, whatever), but will continue to lose the war to run
their businesses as they see fit. In the meantime, the states -- and
not just the cities and the federal government -- are becoming more
accustomed to improperly micromanaging our activities. This is the
exact opposite of what ought to be happening, and is a far cry from,
say, the federal government stepping in to keep states and cities
from keeping Jim Crow laws on the books -- or, in more positive
terms, protectingindividual
rights